The San Sebastián Convention Bureau launches a virtual guide book for tourists

The San Sebastián Conventioun Bureau, the Municipal Tourist Office, the Faculty of Humanities of the Universidad de Deusto-San Sebastián and the companies Vicomtech and Cicerone Servicios Interactivos have launched the eTravelPad project, which will provide the citizens and visitors in San Sebastián with new personalised multimedia information services, in different languages, about leisure and tourism through the PDA’s, the state-of-the-art portable guide books.

The technology of this virtual tourist guide book is based on the creation of a central database with multimedia information –text, audio and video- and on the development of an author’s tool for the staff of the tourist offices for the management of contents.

In order to graphically describe what the service offers, a prototype setting can be recreated: on the first visit to Donostia, a participant in a congress in Kursaal wants to visit the city after a work session. This participant can walk around the area with his PDA and visualise the information that he receives through a wireless connection from the tourism office. The PDA knows the current position of the user and connects with the platform to receive historic data and tourism and leisure resources.

As for the interface, the eTravelPad has bidimensional and tridimensional maps, written information and a series of optional menus.